Very prominent in most of my mushroom trips is the distinct feeling of 'frozen block determinism.' That is to say, that my existence and all of existence is predetermined by the force of causality, I feel that I am able to perceive this directly. I see fractal arcs of phi proportions layered over reality. I see my existence as a minuscule bump on the edge of one of these arcs. I have images of waves in the same shape, crashing back down to the sea, this is a visual metaphor for our lives. We are merely a droplet of ocean spray returning to the great ocean of cosmic existence, inevitably we must return.

All of human existence is comparable to one of the islands of beauty found deep within the Mandelbrot set, it was bound to exist. Given the simple initial formula of the Mandelbrot set these seemingly complex formations deep within it are created, waiting to be discovered. Just as the initial conditions for life on earth are early in the chain of causality which brought us into existence.

It all makes perfect sense to me. This is why I discovered Terence McKenna, this is why I discovered mushrooms, and I'm waiting to find out why I discovered DMT. Each of these things is a turn in the fractal arc of my existence, which will invariably lead to another.

How do you feel about determinism? Obviously your response is predetermined but I would still like to hear it.

I believe that the universe – the multiverse – is deterministic. That’s at odds with quantum mechanics, but who cares.

Determinism, causality, is where it's at. I recognize the string of events that have led to this moment as consensus reality, but that string is merely a path through the field of possibility. Obviously things head in a general direction, but there is room for alternate details (because each moment offers instances of free will) which have the potential themselves to divert the flow entirely.

The realm of potential is beyond comprehension and we collectively navigate through it via causality.

This girl calling herself Lucy Spanglo Daxon once told me that all other possibilities exist with respective versions of everybody/thing. This has been comforting and maddening.

I think I agree more with azrael. LSD and ketamine trips each have revealed spaces where all possibilities exist in plenitude. The proper use of intention appeared to allow me to select which possibilities to return to, while in these states.

It seems that a higher-level of evolution might occur, where as we individually and collectively learn to direct intention, and possible branches that we move away from get pruned off.

I remember Terence and Ralph Abraham discussing chaotic attractors, and pointing out that chaotic systems always contain them, and always more than one. So I believe in determinism in the way that we have no choice but to arrive somewhere, and that systematic flows will have more influence than individual components, but also believe in boundless freedom at every moment which allows mindful individuals to apply themselves towards a specific attractor. It also appears to me that a proposal endlessness (I think?) made, regarding evolutionary free-will, where as intelligence and mindfulness increase, so do the degrees of freedom of the individual as well as their individual influence.

At a fundamental level, all of these conceptions rely upon each other, so determined-not-free, free-not-determined, free-and-determined and not-free-not-determined best describes my position.

A bit of a contradiction in your post – a deterministic universe does not allow for the possibility of free will.

I don't think that this is necessarily true.

Edit: Here's a paper outlining one possible manner that free will can emerge within a deterministic system.

Whether or not free will is possible in a deterministic universe depends entirely on how we define “free will”. The author of the paper claims he has free will because he isn’t a “mindless puppet”, he sees “opposition as emerging from the core of who…[he is]…as a person”, and he has a sense of “personal freedom”.


The paper didn’t show that free will can exist in a deterministic universe, and certainly didn’t explain it. It showed that we can redefine “free will” to make it compatible with a deterministic universe.

In a deterministic universe, every action, both in the outside world and our interior world (our brain) has a cause, and each cause is part of a long causal chain or causal web going back to the beginning of time. All atoms in the universe, including all of the atoms that make up your body and brain, are rigidly bound to obey the laws of physics. Where is the freedom?

At each emergent singularity, a further degree of freedom appears. No one can predict the particular behaviors of chemistry using the laws of physics, even though they don't contradict them. Again for biology from chemistry. A third again for social animals. Further into symbolic/artifact manipulating animals. None of the emergent properties get defined by the previous stratification, just limited. Otherwise, we would only see one type of cellular life, one type of pack structure, one social establishment, etc...

Determinism has nothing to do with our ability to predict. A deterministic system is one whose current state is determined by some previous state.

An extremely complex system whose behaviors could never be predicted can nevertheless be purely deterministic. There is no doubt that our universe is complex beyond human comprehension (and no doubt this incomprehensible complexity reinforces the illusion of free will), but complexity does not preclude determinism.

I'm not trying to preclude determinism. All of our strongest scientific evidence goes against it. Simply suggesting that meaningful gradients of free will can occur within a deterministic system. Since you're unwilling to step away from a "strong" free will position, which I believe has no functional meaning, I guess we're done here.

Fun though.

How would you explain “gradients of free will”? I’ve never heard this idea before. I didn’t know there could be “strong” free will as opposed to… what? “Weak” free will? If an entity could possess even the weakest of weak free will, then I would say that entity had free will. I don’t understand this “gradient” idea with respect to free will.

If all of the individual particles that make up our universe have no free will, then how can a combination of them have free will? To any degree?

There’s at least one old thread which covered free will in greater depth, but I don’t have a link right now.

Thanks. I should have remembered, since I started the thread.